Owner of Edmonton lash extension company has her eye on the future

A fast-expanding Edmonton-area company is opening eyes for its success in the international fashion industry’s booming market for lash extensions.

Courtney Buhler started Sugarlash Pro after outgrowing her successful south Edmonton studio and deciding she wanted to play a larger role in a flourishing field she says only hit the world stage about 15 years ago.

“I came to a crossroads where it was either open more locations, or franchise, or think bigger,” she said while sitting at a large meeting table in her Leduc office.

Buhler, 29, thought bigger. She got into the extension business 10 years ago when, as the mother of a newborn, she was looking for a job where she could set her own hours and was taken for eyelash extensions.

Extensions are a form of synthetic lashes that last up to six weeks, meticulously attached with adhesive one by one to all of the approximately 150 lashes surrounding each eye.

Although the painstaking process lasts a couple of hours and costs $200-$250, Buhler loved her new look, took an afternoon course to become a lash artist and set up shop in the basement of her Rutherford home.

Within three weeks she was booked solid. She eventually had five full-time staff, so she opened Lash Affair on 23 Avenue and continued to expand.

When she maxed out that space three years ago, she felt it was time to go in a different direction. Concerned by “horror stories” of lashes pulled out, damaged or stuck together by insufficiently trained stylists, she came up with a plan to offer practitioners education as well as her own product line.

But the trays of lashes she offered in various lengths, curls, colours, shines and thicknesses — Sugarlash now has 540 different combinations — were so popular they soon became the company’s prime focus.

“They completely took off. Our academy had to go on the back burner until this year,” Buhler said.

“In two years we were in 60-plus countries around the world. This is the third year, and we’re in 80-plus (countries). By my last count, we had 38,000 (stylists) using our products.”

Julie Kehoe, left, is shown on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2018 in Leduc how to put lashes on Nora Mba by Courtney Buhler, right, who founded the Sugarlash Pro eyelash extension sales company three years ago. It is now one of the three biggest brands in North America shows.Greg Southam /
Postmedia

Income is increasing even faster. Sugarlash revenues skyrocketed to $5.8 million in 2017 from $300,000 in 2015, and Buhler expects they’ll double to $10 million this year.

It’s now described as one of the biggest lash extension brands in North America.

That growth requires lots of work. The mother of three’s travel schedule, written in marker on the wall, shows her attending conferences, judging contests and speaking at events in Chicago, Vancouver, Alaska, Toronto, Copenhagen, Prague, Trinidad, Rio and Melbourne between January and July.

Last fall she launched a series of online training courses.

Sugarlash, with 15 staff, has expanded to three bays from the original one in the commercial building where it’s based.

Buhler has been told she should move the business to Los Angeles and admits Alberta’s cold weather has stopped a few people from coming to the province to take jobs.

But the lifelong Edmonton resident is instead scoping out sites where she can build an expanded warehouse, office and training academy in the city’s revitalized downtown.

“I don’t want to be out here … I want to be in the core. I want to be where the hustle and bustle is.”

Sugarlash sells a couple of hundred thousand trays of lashes a year to stylists primarily in North America, Brazil, Australia and the U.K., and Buhler feels the popularity of extensions isn’t going away.

“If women are going to choose something to indulge in, they can choose nails, but nothing’s going to get more attention than your eyes.”

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